Eco, Organic and Bio shopping in Poland
Since my previous post about shopping and grocery stores (click here to check it), made a little Facebook discussion about “not mentioning any Eco friendly smaller shops”, except the biggest market brands available on the market. So, I made a decision about filling in this gap. I spent some time digging and investigating Bio Shopping in Poland to provide answers for subjects mentioned on my bullet point list provided below:
- ECO (EKO), Bio, Organic
- How much does this cost – test
- Where to buy
- Is this just about business and money?
Before I go on with presenting my findings, I need to start with my main idea which is standing behind this post. We hear more and more about us – people, who negatively influence our blue planet. Also, about the consequences which may impact us very soon, very badly. So, if we will not slow down for a moment and will not start changing our bad habits, next generation will be in the serious trouble.
Implementing “baby steps” which will allow us to get on a good path is a good solution here. How is it related with BIO and ECO shopping? I saw few months back documentary movie with David Attenborough in a role of narrator and protagonist, in “A Life on Our Planet” from Netflix. Movie is spectacular and gives a much food for thought, but there was one specific sentence, which got stuck in my mind:
The percentage of wild mammals was far and few between. 60% of the mammals on Earth are livestock, 36% are humans, and just 4% of the living mammals on the planet are wild animals.
Consumerism has reached its peak. We need to slow down and start thinking about cooperating with the nature and not just using it. In my previously mentioned post, I provided information’s and comparison about most common big brand stores in Poland. But let’s be honest – it is really hard to find there real BIO and ECO products. But finally, what do these BIO, ECO and Organic mean?
Bio, Eco and Organic
It is food produced with the use of organic farming methods, i.e. using natural resources and methods ensuring the best conditions for the environment and animals. Processed foods can be considered organic if at least 95% the mass of its ingredients of agricultural origin are ecological ingredients. Consequently, only products that meet the requirements set out in the regulation may be labeled with the term “organic” and its variations such as “eco” or “bio”.
But what does this mean? Happy cows, pigs and chickens which are running on open space. Meat not produced, as people say: “by the factory”. Vegetables without pesticides and preservatives. Milk from cow which is not treated as a machine. Eggs from a chicken which is not sitting whole life in a cage. Off course – managing organic farm is much more expensive and time consuming, as we would compare this to “conventional” farm. So can I actuallly afford this?
Price – how much does Bio Shopping in Poland cost?
I went through few most popular online shopping portals in order to find a list of products comparable with my previous test. I bought back then:
- Poultry sausage 100g (Polędwica or szynka drobiowa)
- Cottage cheese 250g (Twaróg)
- Bread around 500g (Chleb)
- 1x tomato – middle size (Pomidor)
- 1x cucumber – middle size (Ogórek)
- 1L milk (Mleko)
- 1x canned beer – Tyskie (Piwo w puszce)
This time I was not able to find a beer, so I removed it from my shopping list and costs. I managed to find BIO alternatives for products listed above on Organic24. Below the result:
| Products | Lidl | Żabka | Organic24 |
| Ham 100g | 4.99 zł | 4.50 zł | 8.99 zł |
| Cottage cheese 250g | 2.79 zł | 4.80 zł | 9.00 zł |
| Bread 500g | 1.79 zł | 2.20 zł | 6.99 zł |
| Tomato – price per kilo | 6.99 zł | 5.99 zł | 30.00 zł |
| Cucumber – price per kilo | 6.99 zł | 6.99 zł | 40.37 zł |
| 1L milk | 2.15 zł | 3.10 zł | 3.99 zł |
| Total | 25.70 zł | 27.58 zł | 99.34 zł |
99.34 zł instead of 25.70 zł for conventional products bought in Lidl. Almost 4x times more expensive. You may notice that tomatoes (4.3x times more) and cucumbers (5.8x times more) are the most expensive. Price of regular bio milk or ham was only 1.8x more expensive. Off course you might find Eco products cheaper. All products available online are divided into “dry” and “fresh”. Most probably your local Eco store will have a slightly better price especially for “fresh” products as tomatoes or cucumbers.
Still, this price is a lot higher if we would take into the consideration daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly scale. But there two rules worth implementing here.
- Demand and supply in economy. If we will increase demand by buying more and making these products more popular, supply will be higher as well, what creates higher price competition. So, for example: food producers having us more interested about Bio or Eco food will provide more products like this in conventional stores, what will positively impact the price of these products in the future.
- Baby steps rule. We do not need to change our live 180 degrees from one day to another. We may implement small changes and start with small steps. No one wants to pay 3x or 4x times more for shopping in monthly scale. But starting with a list of few fresh products bought in local Eco shop by few people, will start snowball effect and make such products more accessible. I will come back once again to “Baby Steps” rule in further part of my article.
Where can I buy it?
We have two options here – local and online stores.
Local Eco stores are pretty easy do find in Google Maps. It is enough to type in “Eco jedzenie” and check results for your location. Majority of shops have own portals, where you can directly check and compare pricing and type of available products.
Second option are the online shops. There are few important advantages of online shopping in case of bio products:
- You might compare the price and do the shopping without going out of home.
- In majority of online shops, the delivery is free for shopping above 250 zł.
- You may take as much time as you need, to compare products and choose the right one.
- You might create your favorite list, which allows to reduce time of shopping for a next time – weekly shopping might take literally few minutes, by adding saved products to your list.
I went through most popular pages offering bio food, to choose according to my opinion two best ones. The criteria in here was:
- Products available with EU bio certification
- Free delivery from 250 zł or cheap Parcel locker (Paczkomat)
- Vegan and Vegetarian products availability
- Ease and security of use (SSL certification on portal, possibilities to pay, shopping interface)
- Feedback from customers
On the base of this, I chose “Stragan Zdrowia”, “Biogo” and “Organic24”. Links provided below.
Summary of Bio Shopping in Poland
Is this just about business and money?
The intention of this post is not only to show Bio products and where to buy them or price of it. I would like to bring your attention to the bigger problem. Problem on a global scale related with our future and the future of next generation. I am not saying, that buying BIO products is a remedy against all kind of a world environmental issues. It is only one of the ways to help our world to recover.
Allow me to quote once again the sentence from the beginning of this post: (…)60% of the mammals on Earth are livestock (…). Also, another fact from worldwide New York Times statistics: modern world (Europe and USA) waste 40% of produced food but over a billion people in the world go hungry.
I am not saying that we need to twist our lives upside down from one day to another, but I will come back once again to “baby steps” theory. If every single one of us, will reduce the amount of meat eaten as well as food wasted and in addition we will support from time to time BIO food producers, the impact will be huge. So, I will also tell you what do I do, to start my own personal change for better future of our kind.
I have started with having 1x day per week without any meet. Also, I am making sure, that I am buying only this food, which I really need, so I can reduce any wasting of a food to the minimum – planning my shopping in advance helps a lot. I am buying once per a while fresh vegetable from our local farmers. Such “Baby steps” – multiplied by 330 million people in USA and 741 million people in Europe would make huge impact.
I will leave you here with this thought. I hope that you actually like my post, despite the fact that it is not only about BIO shopping 
At the same time, I would love to hear any feedback from you. Also, if you have any local or online store with Eco products which you really recommend, feel free to use comment box below to share your feedback with rest of the readers and me. Cheers!
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wikipedia.org; biznes.gazetaprawna.pl; stat.gov.pl; nytimes.com
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